Category Archives: poetry

For anyone who has wanted to hear about the videopoem or poetryfilm, Steep (1): A digital poetry of gold nanoparticles, that I presented at the 2015 International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA) in Vancouver, your wait is over. From the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars Nov. 7, 2016 announcement (received via email),

An object of desire, the stuff of myth and legend, and a cross-cultural icon, gold is now being perceived in a whole new way at the nanoscale where its properties and colour undergo a change. Increasingly used as a component in biomedical applications, gold nanoparticles are entering the environment (air, soil, and water). ‘Steep (1): A digital poetry of gold nanoparticles’ is a short videopoem exploring the good and the bad about gold at the macroscale and at the nanoscale.

Presented at the 2015 International Symposium on Electronic Arts, the Steep (1) videopoem is an art/sci collaboration between Maryse de la Giroday (science writer and poet) from Canada and Raewyn Turner (video artist) from New Zealand. In addition to a look at the video, the presentation offers an inside perspective on incorporating science, poetry, and video in an art/sci piece. As well, there’ll be some discussion regarding one or more of Maryse’s and Raewyn’s current art/sci projects.

Brief Biography:
Maryse de la Giroday writes and publishes the largest, independent, science blog in Canada. Her main focus is nanotechnology (the Canadian kind when she can find it). She has also written several pieces for local visual arts magazine, Preview. Maryse holds an undergraduate Communications (honours) degree from Simon Fraser University and a Master’s degree (Creative Writing and New Media) from De Montfort University (UK). (Unfortunately, Raewyn will either be in New Zealand or on the US East Coast and unable to attend.)

Thanks to my colleague, Raewyn Turner (artist, New Zealand) for information about this call for proposals. BTW, she and I are talking about putting our own proposal forward but the deadline is Sept. 30, 2016, which isn’t all that far away.

Despite being in full sight, many cabinets and showcases at universities and scientific institutions lie empty or underutilized. Located at the entrance of science departments, in proximity of laboratories, or in busy areas of transition, some contain outdated posters, or dusty scientific objects that have been forgotten there for years. Others lie empty, like old furniture on the curb after a move, waiting for a lucky passer-by in need. The ceaseless flow of bodies walking past these cabinets – some running to meetings, some checking their schedule, some immersed in their thoughts – rarely pay attention to them.

The neglect of these cabinets seems to confirm well-established ideas about science institutions as recluse spaces where secrecy reigns, and communication with the outside world is either underappreciated or prohibited. But at a closer look, this is not the case: those seemingly ignored and neglected cabinets have fascinating and compelling stories that speak to their mobility, their past uses and their owners; laboratories in their proximity burst of excitement and boredom, frustration and euphoria, their machineries being constantly fabricated, rethought, dismantled or replaced; in these laboratories, individuals, objects and instruments come to life in complicated ways. These objects, human relations and stories are forming complex ecologies that are very much alive.

The Cabinet project seeks to explore and to bring to life historical, anecdotal and imagined stories evoked by scientific objects, their surrounding space and the individuals that inhabit them. The goal is to reflect on, and reverse the stereotypical assumptions about science as inaccessible and secretive, to make the intense creativity existing inside science laboratories visible, and to suggest potential interactions between the sciences and the arts.

We invite artists, scientists and other creative individuals to turn a select number of cabinets across the University of Toronto into small-scale installations. Interventions can use a variety of media and material and engage with a number of disciplines.

The resulting distributed exhibition ( March 2017) will feature dialogues between art and science that engage with objects and instruments created in nearby science labs.

Before you send your proposal, make sure to check the location/size of the cabinets, as well as the UTSIC collection.
Please come back often as more cabinets are added

Artists are invited to populate a variety of cabinets around the St. George Campus at the University of Toronto with artworks that

interact with objects and instruments that have been fabricated or used in the labs nearby;

engage with the history of the cabinets (how they got there, who donated them, what was their initial purpose etc..);

narrate imaginary or science fictional stories about the cabinets, the labs in their proximity and the mysterious objects they have produced in the past or are currently producing.

Of course, these are only suggested scenarios. Please, contact us if you have a particular request or idea.

We request that you fill in the online proposal below with a 250 wordsMAX description, accompanied by 3-4 images that meaningfully describe your work. Please, specify your goals, how you plan to interact with certain objects or a particular environment, and how you plan to install your work, using which media etc.. This project assumes that a meaningful interaction with the surrounding context is established.

Should you be so lucky as to be in Reykjavik, Iceland on March 10, 2016, there’s an opportunity to attend a special poetry event at Mengi. Here’s more from a Feb. 25, 2016 announcement (received via email),

The Disinformation Listening Party features an extremely rare presentation of electromagnetic sound works by the pioneering sonic arts project Disinformation. Disinformation was founded in London, England, in 1995, and produced a series of highly-influential LPs and CDs, before crossing-over into the fields of sound installation, kinetic and video art, and pure research (early Disinformation works were published by the record company Ash International, aka Touch Records, later works were published by Iris Light and Adaadat Records). Disinformation installations have been described as “actively thrilling” by The Financial Times, The Sound Projector (music magazine) spoke of Disinformation producing “potent drug-like trances of utter black mysteriousness”, The Metro newspaper described Disinformation as “the black-ops unit of the avant-garde”, and The Guardian stated that “Disinformation combine scientific nous with poetic lyricism to create some of the most beautiful installations around”.

The Disinformation Listening Party focusses on shortwave radio recordings of so-called “Type II” (slow-drift) noise storms produced by coronal mass ejections on the surface of the sun.

Disinformation producer Joe Banks is a former UK government funded Research Fellow at City University (London), at Goldsmiths College and The University of Westminster, and is the author of a monograph on psychoacoustics published as “Rorschach Audio – Art & Illusion for Sound”.

PoetryFilm is an iconic and highly influential research art project and screening series, founded by curator and artist Zata Banks [now Zitowski] in 2002. PoetryFilm Paradox is an hour-long presentation, featuring 13 short film artworks exploring the complexities of erotic, romantic and familial love, including animator Kate Jessop’s moving screen adaptation of a letter from Dolce & Gabbana designer Stefano Gabbana to his partner Domenico Dolce; Bruno Teixidor’s powerful film fantasia based on a poem by the Mexican author and translator Tomas Segovia; Brooke Griffin’s sign language film, based on poetry by Raymond Luczak; Stuart Pound’s hypnotic computer visualisation of “Die Nebensonnen” by Franz Schubert; Martin Pickles and Mikey Georgeson’s contemporary rendition of the classic “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot; “Fucking Him” by artists C.O. Moed & Adrian Garcia Gomez; and “447: Intellect – N” – an extraordinary montage of Scrabble letters and electronic noise, by artist Jane Glennie. PoetryFilm Paradox was part of the British Film Institute’s 2015 “LOVE” season (supported by Film Hub London, and managed by Film London, in partnership with the BFI Audience Network), and all 3 London screenings sold out.

…

There is a Facebook posting for this event which also features other events at Mengi.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has made an open call for art works that could be part of the the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft mission bound for Bennu (an asteroid). From a Feb. 23, 2016 NASA news release on EurekAlert,

OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to launch in September and travel to the asteroid Bennu. The #WeTheExplorers campaign invites the public to take part in this mission by expressing, through art, how the mission’s spirit of exploration is reflected in their own lives. Submitted works of art will be saved on a chip on the spacecraft. The spacecraft already carries a chip with more than 442,000 names submitted through the 2014 “Messages to Bennu” campaign.

“The development of the spacecraft and instruments has been a hugely creative process, where ultimately the canvas is the machined metal and composites preparing for launch in September,” said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It is fitting that this endeavor can inspire the public to express their creativity to be carried by OSIRIS-REx into space.”

A submission may take the form of a sketch, photograph, graphic, poem, song, short video or other creative or artistic expression that reflects what it means to be an explorer. Submissions will be accepted via Twitter and Instagram until March 20, 2016. For details on how to include your submission on the mission to Bennu, go to:

“Space exploration is an inherently creative activity,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “We are inviting the world to join us on this great adventure by placing their art work on the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, where it will stay in space for millennia.”

The spacecraft will voyage to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu to collect a sample of at least 60 grams (2.1 ounces) and return it to Earth for study. Scientists expect Bennu may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of the water and organic molecules that may have made their way to Earth.

Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. The University of Arizona, Tucson leads the science team and observation planning and processing. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is building the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages New Frontiers for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

I wonder why the Egyptian mythology as in Osiris and Bennu. For those who need a refresher on the topic, here’s more from the Osiris entry on Wikipedia (Note: Links have been removed),

Osiris (/oʊˈsaɪərᵻs/, alternatively Ausir, Asiri or Ausar, among other spellings), was an Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld, and the dead, but more appropriately as the god of transition, resurrection, and regeneration.

Then there’s this from the Bennu entry on Wikipedia (Note: Links have been removed),

The Bennu is an ancient Egyptian deity linked with the sun, creation, and rebirth. It may have been the inspiration for the phoenix in Greek mythology.

… Born from the rubble of a violent collision, hurled through space for millions of years and dismembered by the gravity of planets, asteroid Bennu had a tough life in a rough neighborhood: the early solar system. …

“We are going to Bennu because we want to know what it has witnessed over the course of its evolution,” said Edward Beshore of the University of Arizona, Deputy Principal Investigator for NASA’s asteroid-sample-return mission OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security – Regolith Explorer). The mission will be launched toward Bennu in late 2016, arrive at the asteroid in 2018, and return a sample of Bennu’s surface to Earth in 2023.

“Bennu’s experiences will tell us more about where our solar system came from and how it evolved. Like the detectives in a crime show episode, we’ll examine bits of evidence from Bennu to understand more completely the story of the solar system, which is ultimately the story of our origin.”

Getting back to the artwork, Sarah Cascone has written a Feb. 22, 2016 posting for artnet news, which features the call for submissions and some work which already been submitted (Note: Links have been removed),

The near-Earth asteroid Bennu will become the first extra-terrestrial art gallery, with the space agency inviting the public to contribute works of art that are inspired by the spirit of exploration.

The project will follow other important moments in space art history, which include work by Invader traveling aboard the International Space Station, conceptual artwork on the UKube-1 satellite, and even a bonsai tree launched into space.

Here’s a selection of the artworks being embedded in Cascone’s posting,

At very long last, here’s our (Raewyn Turner’s and my) video, Steep (1): A digital poetry of gold nanoparticles which was presented at the 2015 International Symposium (ISEA) held in Vancouver in August 2015,

There’s more about the project and my participation (poetry) with Raewyn Turner, a visual artist from New Zealand, in an April 24, 2015 posting (scroll down about 75% of the way).

On Jan. 9, 2016 the latest issue (January 2016) of PoetryFilm News landed in my email box (*Note: There’s a long blank space between the last excerpt and my last comments. I’m sorry but I can’t figure what’s causing it. sigh*),

Forthcoming in 2016

I [Zata Banks] have been awarded a 3-month Artist-Researcher residency at the Skagastrond Research Library in Iceland in association with The University of Iceland. … (January – April 2016)

Collaboration with The University of Lincoln [UK] on a Poetry + Film creative module for the BA Graphic Design course, including a lecture, and evaluating the final student work (January – March 2016)

Screening of a selection of psychoanalysis-informed poetry film artworks taken from The PoetryFilm Archive + psychoanalytic discussion at The Freud Museum, London [UK] (March 2016, exact date TBC)

Lecture at Millfield School [UK] about the poetry film artform to inspire sixth form students to make their own poetry film artworks (April 2016)

I [Zata Banks] have been invited to judge the USA-based Carbon Culture Review poetry film competition (closing date April 2016).

The Carbon Culture Review (CCR; its focus is on new literature, art, technology, and contemporary culture) poetry film competition was last mentioned here in an Oct. 30, 2015 posting. Since then more information (deadline extension and a broader scope for entries) about the competition has been made available. From the CCR Poetry Film webpage,

Poetry Film Prize

We want to integrate film and literary culture. Carbon Culture will award a $1,000.00 prize for the best poetry film. Zata Kitowski [now Banks], director of PoetryFilm, will pick the grand prize winner and finalists. The winning entry will receive $1,000.00. The top five entries will receive high-profile placements across our social media networks, a one page note alongside honorable mentions in our newsstand print and device editions. Deadline for submissions is April 1, 2016.

By submitting, you grant CCR the right to publish selected poetry films in our online issue as well as recognition in our print issue. All rights revert to the film creator(s) and/or submitter.

Rules for Submission

Create a video adaptation of your original, unpublished poem.

Post the video to a Youtube or Vimeo account and make it live.

Submit the piece as an .Mp4 alongside your bio or team member’s bios to us.

One submission per poet, please. If you previously created a poetry film for our initial guidelines listed in early 2015 for John Gosslee’s poem before we opened the contest to any original poem, you may submit this and one other poetry film for consideration.

Prize Announcements will be made in July 2016. Payment will be made via Paypal.

Film Types

All visual and textual interpretations of any contemporary poem written by you or someone on your team are welcome. Animation (digital or cartoon,) live action, kinetic poems, stop motion, anything you can imagine. We are looking for literal and non-literal interpretations of the poem. How long should it be? That is up to you. Poetry is meant to be heard and we encourage audio.

Eligibility

The prize is open to poets, students, individuals and teams.

You can go here to submit your piece and if you haven’t already, you will need to create an account.

I have been invited to judge the Carbon Culture Review poetry film competition (USA)

poetryfilmkanal in Germany recently invited me to write an article about the poetry film artform – it can be read here

FYI, the “I” in the announcement’s text is for Zata Banks, the founder and director of PoetryFilm since 2002.

There’s more about the CYCLOP International Videopoetry Festival in a Sept. 13, 2015 posting on the PoetryFilm website,

*The 5th CYCLOP International Videopoetry Festival will take place on 20 – 22 November 2015 in Ukraine (Kyiv). The festival programme features video poetry-related lectures, workshops, round tables, discussions, presentations of international contests and festivals, as well as a demonstration of the best examples of Ukrainian and world videopoetry, a competitive programme, an awards ceremony and other related projects.

I can’t find a website for the Carbon Culture Review poetry film competition or a webpage for it on the Carbon Culture Review website but here’s what they have to say about themselves on the journal’s About page,

Carbon Culture Review is a journal at the intersection of new literature, art, technology and contemporary culture. We define culture broadly as the values, attitudes, actions and inventions of our global society and its subcultures in our modern age. Carbon Culture Review is distributed in the United States and countries throughout the world by Publisher’s Distribution Group, Inc. and Annas International as well as digitally through 0s&1s, Magzter and Amazon. CCR is a member of Councils of Literary Magazines and Presses and also publishes monthly online issues.

The last item from the announcement that I’m highlighting is Zata’s essay for poetryfilmkanal ,

Poetry films offer creative opportunities for exploring new semiotic modes and for communicating messages and meanings in innovative ways. Poetry films open up new methods of engagement, new audiences, and new means of self-expression, and also provide rich potential for the creation, perception and experience of emotion and meaning.

…

We are surrounded by communicative signs in literature, art, culture and in the world at large. Whilst words represent one system of communicating, there are many other ways of making meanings, for instance, colour semiotics, typographic design, and haptic, olfactive, gustatory and durational experiences – indeed, a comprehensive list could be infinite. The uses of spoken and written words to communicate represent just two approaches among many. Through using meaning-making systems other than words, by communicating without words, or by not using words alone, we can bypass these direct signifiers and tap directly into pools of meaning, or the signifieds, associated with those words. Different combinations of systems, or modes, can reinforce each other, render meanings more complex and subtle, or contrast with each other to illuminate different perspectives. Powerful juxtapositions, associations and new meanings can therefore emerge.

The essay is a good introduction for beginners and a good refresher for those in need. Btw, I understand Zata got married in March 2015. Congratulations to Zata and Joe!

The 2015 International Symposium on Electronic Arts (or ISEA 2015) held in Vancouver ended yesterday, Aug. 19, 2015. It was quite an experience both as a participant and as a presenter (mentioned in my Aug. 14, 2015 posting, Sneak peek: Steep (1): a digital poetry of gold nanoparticles). Both this ISEA and the one I attended previously in 2009 (Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Dublin, Ireland) were jampacked with sessions, keynote addresses, special events, and exhibitions of various artworks. Exhilarating and exhausting, that is the ISEA experience for me and just about anyone else I talked to here in Vancouver (Canada). In terms of organization, I have to give props to the Irish. Unfortunately, the Vancouver team didn’t seem to have given their volunteers any training and technical difficulties abounded. Basics such as having a poster outside a room noting what session was taking place, signage indicating which artist’s work was being featured, and good technical support (my guy managed to plug in a few things but seemed disinclined or perhaps didn’t have the technical expertise (?) to troubleshoot prior to the presentation) seemed elusive (a keynote presentation had to be moved due to technical requirements [!] plus no one told the volunteer staff who consequently misdirected people). Ooops.

Despite the difficulties, people remained enthusiastic and that’s a tribute to both the participants and, importantly, the organizers. The Vancouver ISEA was a huge undertaking with over 1000 presentation submissions made and over 1800 art work submissions. They had 900+ register and were the first ISEA able to offer payment to artists for their installations. Bravo to Philippe Pasquier, Thecla Schiphorst, Kate Armstrong, Malcolm Levy, and all the others who worked hard to pull this off.

Moving on to ‘I’, while the theme for ISEA 2015 was Disruption, I noticed a number of presentations focused on biology and on networks (in particular, generative networks). In some ways this parallels what’s happening in the sciences where more notice is being given to networks and network communications of all sorts. For example, there’s an Aug. 19, 2015 news item on ScienceDaily suggesting that our use of the pronoun ‘I’ may become outdated. What we consider to be an individual may be better understood as a host for a number of communities or networks,

Recent microbiological research has shown that thinking of plants and animals, including humans, as autonomous individuals is a serious over-simplification.

A series of groundbreaking studies have revealed that what we have always thought of as individuals are actually “biomolecular networks” that consist of visible hosts plus millions of invisible microbes that have a significant effect on how the host develops, the diseases it catches, how it behaves and possibly even its social interactions.

“It’s a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts,” said Seth Bordenstein, associate professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University, who has contributed to the body of scientific knowledge that is pointing to the conclusion that symbiotic microbes play a fundamental role in virtually all aspects of plant and animal biology, including the origin of new species.

In this case, the parts are the host and its genome plus the thousands of different species of bacteria living in or on the host, along with all their genomes, collectively known as the microbiome. (The host is something like the tip of the iceberg while the bacteria are like the part of the iceberg that is underwater: Nine out of every 10 cells in plant and animal bodies are bacterial. But bacterial cells are so much smaller than host cells that they have generally gone unnoticed.)

Microbiologists have coined new terms for these collective entities — holobiont — and for their genomes — hologenome. “These terms are needed to define the assemblage of organisms that makes up the so-called individual,” said Bordenstein.

In the article “Host Biology in Light of the Microbiome: Ten Principles of Holobionts and Hologenomes” published online Aug. 18 [2015] in the open access journal PLOS Biology, Bordenstein and his colleague Kevin Theis from the University of Michigan take the general concepts involved in this new paradigm and break them down into underlying principles that apply to the entire field of biology.

They make specific and refutable predictions based on these principles and call for other biologists to test them theoretically and experimentally.

“One of the basic expectations from this conceptual framework is that animal and plant experiments that do not account for what is happening at the microbiological level will be incomplete and, in some cases, will be misleading as well,” said Bordenstein.

The first principle they advance is that holobionts and hologenomes are fundamental units of biological organization.

Another is that evolutionary forces such as natural selection and drift may act on the hologenome not just on the genome. So mutations in the microbiome that affect the fitness of a holobiont are just as important as mutations in the host’s genome. However, they argue that this does not change the basic rules of evolution but simply upgrades the types of biological units that the rules may act upon.

Although it does not change the basic rules of evolution, holobionts do have a way to respond to environmental challenges that is not available to individual organisms: They can alter the composition of their bacterial communities. For example, if a holobiont is attacked by a pathogen that the host cannot defend against, another symbiont may fulfill the job by manufacturing a toxin that can kill the invader. In this light, the microbes are as much part of the holobiont immune system as the host immune genes themselves.

According to Bordenstein, these ideas are gaining acceptance in the microbiology community. At the American Society of Microbiology General Meeting in June [2015], he convened the inaugural session on “Holobionts and Their Hologenomes” and ASM’s flagship journal mBio plans to publish a special issue on the topic in the coming year. [emphases are mine]

However, adoption of these ideas has been slower in other fields.

“Currently, the field of biology has reached an inflection point. The silos of microbiology, zoology and botany are breaking down and we hope that this framework will help further unify these fields,” said Bordenstein.

Not only will this powerful holistic approach affect the basic biological sciences but it also is likely to impact the practice of personalized medicine as well, Bordenstein said.

Take the missing heritability problem, for example. Although genome-wide studies have provided valuable insights into the genetic basis of a number of simple diseases, they have only found a small portion of the genetic causes of a number of more complex conditions such as autoimmune and metabolic diseases.

These may in part be “missing” because the genetic factors that cause them are in the microbiome, he pointed out.

“Instead of being so ‘germophobic,’ we need to accept the fact that we live in and benefit from a microbial world. We are as much an environment for microbes as microbes are for us,” said Bordenstein.

It’s intriguing to see artists and scientists exploring ideas that resonate with each other. In fact, ISEA 2015 hosted a couple of sessions on BioArt, as well as, having sessions devoted to networks. While, I wasn’t thinking about networks or biological systems when I wrote my poem on gold nanoparticles, I did pose this possibility (how we become the sum of our parts) at the end:

Nature’s alchemy
breathing them
eating them
drinking them
we become gold
discovering what we are

As for how Raewyn handled the idea, words fail, please do go here to see the video here.

The June/July 2015 issue of the Nano Bite (newsletter from the Nanoscale Information Science Education Network [NISENet]) notes the successes enjoyed by the organization over the last 10 years,

Even as our ten years of funding from the National Science Foundation comes to an end, the NISE Net’s capacity to reach the public is at its peak! The numbers in our year-10 annual report show a total of 598 organizations that regularly participate in NISE Net activities, of which 352 are museums or other kinds of informal science education groups, 203 are groups from universities, and 43 are a variety of other kinds of organizations.

…

Over 1600 NanoDays kits have been distributed throughout the country and partners report using them for all kinds of programming all during the year, not just for NanoDays. Nearly 200 mini-grants have allowed partners to adapt and incorporate nano educational activities into ongoing programs, to use them to bring nano education to underserved and under-represented audiences, and to build new partnerships around nano education and outreach. Soon a total of 93 Nano mini-exhibitions will have been deployed across the U.S., some stationary and some shared at a total of 149 organizations. And with the full deployment of mini-exhibitions, NISE Net educational resources reach over 10 million members of the public each year!!!

NISENet has also organized a number of spin-off projects (from the newsletter),

We have been talking with a variety of folks about this and a few spin-off projects are already underway. The most closely connected spin-off is being made possible by a supplement to our NISE Net award from NSF that will allow us to develop kit of materials to support the expansion and/or development of new Museum and Community Partnerships to reach underserved audiences. Another spin-off is the Building with Biology project that focuses on public engagement through conversations and activities about synthetic biology, and will also entail the development of a kit. Also underway is the Sustainability in Science Museums project, aimed at engaging the public in sustainability through the educational power of science centers and museums, also to include a kit of activities and programs

Monday, April 27, 2015, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm is a combined bee/poetry event at the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. From the Vancouver Public Library “Honey, Hives, and Poetry in the City” event page,

Celebrate National Poetry Month by investigating food and poetry as a means of cultural and social activism and community building. Featured will be:

The day after the bee/poetry event, Tuesday, April 28, 2015 Café Scientifique, held in the back room of The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.], will be hosting a talk on pain (from the April 13, 2015 announcement,

Our speakers for the evening will be Dr. Matthew Ramer and Dr. John Kramer. The title of their talk is:

Knowing Pains: How can we study pain to better treat it?

Pain is arguably the most useful of sensations. It is nature’s way of telling us to stop doing whatever it is we are doing in order to prevent damage, and to protect injured body parts during the healing process. In the absence of pain (in certain congenital conditions and in advanced diabetes, for example), the consequence can be loss of limbs and even of life.

There are circumstances, however, when pain serves no useful purpose: it persists when the injury has healed or occurs in the absence of any frank tissue damage, and is inappropriate in context (previously innocuous stimuli become painful) and magnitude (mildly painful stimuli become excruciating). This is called neuropathic pain and is incredibly difficult to treat because it is unresponsive to all of the drugs we use to treat normal, useful (“acute”) pain.

Ultimately, our research is aimed at finding new ways to minimise suffering from neuropathic pain. Prerequisites to this goal include understanding how normal and neuropathic pain are encoded and perceived by the nervous system, and accurately measuring and quantifying pain so that we can draw reasonable conclusions about whether or not a particular treatment is effective. We will discuss some historical and current ideas of how pain is transmitted from body to brain, and emphasize that the pain “channel” is not hard-wired, but like the process of learning, it is plastic, labile, and subject to “top-down” control. We will also tackle the contentious issue of pain measurement in the clinic and laboratory.*

Both speakers are from iCORD (International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries), an interdisciplinary research centre focused on spinal cord injury located at Vancouver General Hospital. There’s more about Dr. Matt Ramer here and Dr. John Kramer here.

Bonnie Bassler
The Secret, Social Lives of Bacteria
Vogue Theatre
Tuesday May 26th, 2015
Doors 6:30PM, Begins 7:30PMFree Entry**Tickets must be redeemed by 7:15PM to be valid**

Dr. Bonnie Bassler is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Squibb Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. The research in Dr. Bassler’s laboratory focuses on the chemical signaling mechanisms that bacteria use to communicate with each other known as “quorum sensing.” Therapies that block quorum sensing activity may represent an important new strategy for combating bacterial infections. Her research reveals new insights into the basic biology and ecology of bacteria; findings that may have direct application in the future treatment of disease.
…
Vogue Theatre
918 Granville Street – Vancouver

Go forth and enjoy!

* Removed ‘,t’ at very end of Café Scientifique excerpt on April 24, 2015.